bcbusiness.ca OctOber 2016 BCBusiness 81
pony up—other socially minded groups
aren't waiting for that to happen.
Robert Brown is a developer who
has come up with some creative ideas
to develop small but a‚ordable rental
housing projects—partnering with
nonpro"ts and civic governments that
have developable land. His Catalyst
Community Development Society
is working with Oakridge Lutheran
Church as partners to develop their site
at 585 West 41st Avenue into a six-storey
building with 46 units of social hous-
ing. The church contributes the land;
Catalyst o‚ers investment and develop-
ment expertise. Together they will own
the building, including a ground-level
retail space that will be rented at mar-
ket rate, with revenue from the retail
subsidizing the housing.
But each Catalyst project, he says,
is di‚erent. His aim is to supply work-
force rental housing, de"ned as hous-
ing for people who earn between
$25,000 and $60,000 a year. He's got
partnerships in New Westminster,
Port Moody, Victoria and Vancouver.
The City of New Westminster is selling
Catalyst and a nonpro"t partner one
of its properties for $1 to develop three
workforce rental units and three units
for disabled people. It will have a cov-
enant on the title saying it can never be
sold for market value.
"You're not getting that big capital
infusion at the beginning, but you are
also not transferring a bunch of pub-
licly owned land into the market that's
never coming back," he says. "That's
the trade-o‚. The cost of development
will be a challenge at the beginning.
But 20 or 30 or 40 years down the road,
when these workforce rental-housing
units are producing revenue, we can
start providing a cash ³ow. There are
so many ways to cut it."
Another innovative approach can
be seen at Toronto's Regent Park. The
28-hectare Cabbagetown site, built in
1948, had deteriorated over the decades
into an isolated, crime-ridden slum. In
2005, the Toronto Community Housing
Corporation—the city's housing arm,
created in 2002—marked Regent Park
as its ®irst regeneration project. As
TCHC's chief development o¬cer at the
time, Mark Guslits wanted to do some-
thing outside of the usual deal with a
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